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Article: TEENSIEST CRITTERS DANGLE GREATEST BOON BACTERIOPHAGE PARASITES COPY PENICILLIN'S BACTERIA WIPEOUT, HINT AT NEW ANTIBIOTICS CLASS.(Brief Article)
- Article from:
- BIOWORLD Today
- Article date:
- June 25, 2001
- Author:
CopyrightCOPYRIGHT 2001 A Thomson Healthcare Company. This material is published under license from the publisher through the Gale Group, Farmington Hills, Michigan. All inquiries regarding rights should be directed to the Gale Group. (Hide copyright information)
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Burglars and law enforcers aren't the only forms of life that resort to breaking and entering - or exiting.
The smallest life forms of all - bacterial viruses - need to penetrate the stout outer cell walls and fragile inner membranes that envelop and protect those prokaryotic pathogens from the cruel world out there. Once safely inside - by tricks not well known - a bacteriophage spawns its hundreds or thousands of progeny phages.
But what goes in must come out. To escape its bacterial host's interior in order to move on and infect the next host organism, newly hatched bacteriophage progeny resort to various strategies for breaking and exiting.
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